


reach out, touch faith

by element78



Series: small restless gods [2]
Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Getting Together, M/M, Possession, brief cameos by thomas elliot and clark kent, bruce wayne's continuing saga of not actually major character death, dealing with grief, dick grayson and his complicated relationship with bruce wayne, jaydick-flashfic: anniversary, liberties were taken with canon, of a sort, the obsession with blood and violence expected of a character sharing headspace with a bat demon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-25
Updated: 2020-02-25
Packaged: 2021-02-28 03:33:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22887112
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/element78/pseuds/element78
Summary: In the year since Bruce Wayne's death and Dick Grayson's bargain with the dark being in the Shrine, he's mostly come to terms with his new role as Batman.  But a slip of control leaves him shaken and scared that he is about to become Gotham's own worst enemy, and only the Red Hood can pull him back from the edge.
Relationships: Dick Grayson/Jason Todd
Series: small restless gods [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1645024
Comments: 13
Kudos: 180
Collections: Jaydick Flash Fanwork Challenge





	reach out, touch faith

**Author's Note:**

> So this is a series now, I guess.
> 
> This was only supposed to be about 3000 words but Damian decided to be dramatic and Dick wasn't dealing well with the fallout and the next thing I know I'm watching the counter approach 12k because self-control is a myth.

He surfaced to the smell of blood, to the feeling of claws rending and slashing, hands on his shoulders and pain rippling through him, wings thrashing against a net dropped to pin him down, to cage him and lock him away like the feral beast he was becoming-

“-if you don’t wake up, Grayson!”

A voice. A familiar one, and Dick gasped as he woke up properly, coming up from a deep dive. The net was his bedsheets, tangled around his body by his own thrashing. The hands were Damian’s, holding him still and weighing him down. The blood was his own, sharp claws ripping right through his pajamas and carving bloody slashes along his thighs, his ribs.

“Damian,” he gasped. His Robin- the bravest of them all, saddling himself so willingly with an untested and untempered Batman- released his shoulders and stepped away from where he’d been leaning over Dick’s bed. Dick’s blood was on his hands and wrists, smeared with nightmare-sweat onto the boy’s skin.

“You were shouting,” Damian said, and Dick couldn’t focus on him, not yet, not well enough to read him. There were teeth pricking at the back of his neck, ready to bite down. The sensation eased as Dick’s heart rate settled but the feeling of being watched did not. Still too close to the knife’s edge, still one slip away from gouging himself open.

“I’m fine,” Dick lied, because Damian was watching him with wary eyes. He looked tired too, bags under his eyes, posture coiled tight with tension in order to hide the exhausted shaking. 

“You hurt yourself,” Damian said accusingly, jerking his pointy chin to indicate the blood on Dick’s hands, pajamas, sheet. Dick knew him well enough now to recognize when his anger was disguising fear, and he turned his hands inward to hide the claws that were slowly receding into blunt human nails, as if that would make anything better.

The alarm clock had met its demise long ago, but his phone was plugged in on the ground where it would be safe. Dick rolled over and waved a hand over it to activate its screen and sighed at the numbers. It was Sunday morning, they had no public commitments- not that anyone would truly expect a public appearance from them anyways, after the events of the past week- but two hours of restless sleep was not enough to face even a day of doing nothing.

“I’m fine,” he said again as he sat up, and it was no more true than it had been moments ago. “I’m awake. You should go back to bed.” There. Two truths in a row.

Damian said nothing, just moved a few steps away to give Dick space as he stood up and moved away from the bed. Too big, it was too big when he was in it by himself. He strode over to the wide window and threw the blackout curtains open.

Gotham glittered before him, the lights of the night city still bright against the darkness. It wouldn’t be dawn for an hour yet. Dick leaned one shoulder against the window and looked down into the streets below, imagining- or maybe he really did see- a flash of red, of purple, a figure moving too fast to be seen against the lights. He remembered, visceral and real as though it were happening just then, leaping off the penthouse roof and swinging down into the city, an alien predator’s thirst for blood on his tongue. He should be out there now, hunting for the people that had thought they could hurt one of his own-

His breath was coming too fast. The teeth were back on his neck, breath hot against his skin. He jerked the curtain close and turned away too fast, like he was panicking.

Even in the pitch-blackness he could see perfectly the small body outlined in false silver and sharp edges. It moved towards him steadily, almost as at home in the dark as he was, and fell into place beside him. Dick closed his eyes and focused on controlling his breathing until it was normal again. He reached out and put one hand carefully on Damian’s shoulder, trying not to get any more blood on him, and was gratified beyond words when the boy didn’t even flinch at the touch.

“Go back to bed, Damian,” he said, steady and controlled, a team leader’s voice even if he couldn’t find Batman’s yet. Damian still hesitated, pausing to stare up at him. “I’ll be alright.”

Whether that one was true or not, he could not say.

* * *

Daytime was always easier- the extra weight in his mind, the presence breathing on the back of his neck, retreated until he could almost convince himself it was gone for good. After cleaning himself up and patching up the worst of the scratches, Dick even managed another half hour of sleep in the dawnlight, curtains open, until the sun rose properly and chased him from his bed. 

It wasn’t enough, judging by Alfred’s pinched expression. Or maybe he had already discovered the bloodied bedclothes Dick had tried to bury midway through the laundry pile. He set a plate of waffles and an entire tray of sausages down at Dick’s place at the kitchen bar.

“You’re not going out tonight, I hope,” he said, his tone not at all a request in spite of his words. Dick slid into his seat and ducked his head, hiding the wince of pain by taking a large bite of sausage.

“We need to look into something for one of our cases, but we only need the database for that,” he allowed. He thought about going out, the heavy weight of the cape on his back, and fought off a shudder. Bruce had fought through worse, of course, had gone on patrol with broken limbs and brain-boiling fevers, with his control stretched thin as a thread and ready to snap, and somehow made it back home every single time. But Dick Grayson was not Bruce Wayne.

Alfred stared him down until Dick left the sausages alone and started cutting up the waffle, then returned to his own cup of tea. “The news this morning had a report on the Morris brothers,” he said, calm and steady. He had seen worse, Dick told himself- held onto the thought, a life preserver in a storm. Alfred had seen worse. Dick didn’t scare him. “They were reported as being in stable condition.”

Dick slowly, carefully let out the breath he hadn’t been aware he’d been holding. He hadn’t killed them. They might wish he had, when they woke up and saw what was left of their faces, but he hadn’t killed them. He could forgive himself anything else.

“Where’s Damian?” he asked, instead of responding to that.

“Downstairs in the gym, where he has been since before I woke up,” Alfred said. Dick sighed and stabbed his fork at a strawberry.

“I had a nightmare last night,” he admitted. “I sent him back to bed, but I think I scared him pretty good.”

Alfred reached over and put two fingers above Dick’s left wrist, gently pushing to turn his arm over. And there, on the outside of his arm just below his elbow, were three gouges crusted with dried blood. They hadn’t hurt enough to stand out against the background chorus of pain, and so he had missed them entirely while cleaning himself up last night.

“I should say so,” Alfred agreed.

“It’s fine.” Lie. “ _I’m_ fine.” Lie again. “It’s just- bad timing.”

Alfred set his tea down and stared at it, and Dick looked away. This was the one person he didn’t need to explain himself to, but he heard himself try anyway. “It’s been almost a year. If this had happened a month ago, it wouldn’t be-”

He stopped, because he could feel something welling up in his throat, and he couldn’t tell if it was tears of grief or a scream of rage, or a mixture of both.

“You had best see to Master Damian,” Alfred said, not unkindly, but leaving no room for debate on the subject change. “He believes this to be his fault.”

“Of course he does,” Dick sighed. He had too, when he had been in a similar position as Robin. These days, with the benefit of years of experience and the position of responsibility, he could understand why that was utter bullshit. Now to find a way to explain that to Damian, with hopefully more emotional tact than Bruce had ever managed.

“Perhaps give Master Jason a visit sometime today as well,” Alfred said, and Dick froze and stared at him. The old man was stirring his tea innocently. “He seems to be experiencing some problems with his phone. Apparently it no longer rings when certain people call him.”

Dick forced himself to relax and rubbed a hand over his mouth. There was blood on his tongue, a hold on the back of his neck strong enough to be felt through the cowl, the blunt impact of a fist against his sternum driving all the air out of his lungs.

“I’ll see,” he said, not promising anything, and slid off his seat and away before Alfred could pin him down on a more solid answer. Jason wasn’t avoiding everyone, just Dick, and for good reason.

Alfred let him go, and drank his tea in a silence heavy with unspoken things.

* * *

He had thought he would find Damian down in the Bunker merrily lopping heads off practice dummies, both in training and as therapy. But when the elevator _ping_ ed his arrival and the doors opened, the subtle smell of sweat and a whisper of blood drew him to the right instead, where a punching bag was receiving the beating of its life. Damian had at least taped his hands, but blood seeped into the gauze from split knuckles anyway. His arms were shaking with exertion and his breathing had gone through panting and was bordering on gasping, and his gaze was focused but glazed over. He had been at this for hours.

Dick leaned against the opposite side of the bag, holding it still for the next punch. The shock of sudden resistance finally snapped Damian into awareness, one bloody fist still planted against the bag.

“Grayson,” he said, surprised at his presence and hiding it badly.

Snapping at him would only put him on the defensive, so Dick swallowed the irritation at an order disobeyed and merely asked, “What happened to going back to bed?”

Damian’s hands flexed, no doubt testing the limits of his pain. Dick had split skin and broken knuckles before, occasionally on bags, most often on someone’s face. He wondered if Damian had ever beaten something to the point of breaking his own hands before now. It seemed messy, for him.

“Did you sleep at all?” he countered. 

“Little bit,” Dick admitted, circling around the bag so he was standing next to Damian. He held out a hand, and Damian complied after a moment’s stubbornness, carefully placing his own hand into Dick’s. It seemed so small in Dick’s palm, even wrapped in bloody bandages and shaking with remembered fury. Dick picked at the bandages and grimaced at the mess underneath.

Damian met his gaze when Dick let his hand go, chin up and eyes clear. He expected punishment for his own careless self-destructiveness.

“Come on,” Dick ordered, and turned on his heel and strode away. 

He grabbed the first aid kit and sat down on the bench against the wall near the shower, Damian silent on his heels the whole time. Small scissors meant to cut thread for stitches cut the mangled gauze easily enough, and Dick wiped away the blood with antiseptic-soaked pads while Damian stood before him and carefully smothered all signs of pain. It made Dick’s heart ache to see it- a week ago, Damian would have sat next to him, would have squirmed and protested that he could do it himself but made no real effort to pull away.

“We’re staying in tonight,” Dick said into that awful silence as he pressed a cotton wad over the worst of the splits to stem the sluggish bleeding. Damian went tense at that, his arm shaking even harder with exhaustion.

“I will not be a liability,” he protested, aiming for angry and landing solidly on desperate. He tried to curl his hands into fists and grimaced at the pain as torn skin shifted and pulled.

“No,” Dick said, pushing at the fingers on the hand in his grip until they loosened again. Then he lifted his left arm to show Damian the scratches he had missed. “But I might.”

Damian’s eyes went wide- he probably hadn’t seen how bad it was in the dark of Dick’s room, hadn’t realized how much damage Dick had done to himself. Then his jaw ticked tighter and he looked away, and Dick sighed, because he recognized this too.

“You did the right thing, you know,” he said.

The hand in his curled into a fist again and jerked away. The cotton stuck to the tacky blood and Damian yanked it off and threw it away from himself as best he could. “I did nothing,” he spat.

“Exactly.” Dick looked up at him- they were almost of a height, with Dick on the bench and Damian standing before him. “You did nothing, which was the right thing to do. They took Damian Wayne, not Robin. If you had fought them as Damian they might have figured it out.”

“If I had fought them, they would not have had the chance to tell anyone anything they figured out,” Damian said. Dick believed it- Damian had thrown at him before, in the depths of their nastiest fights, using the blood on his own hands to try and drive Dick away. Now he sounded scared that it would finally work, and Dick smiled sadly.

“I know. I’m glad you didn’t.”

The boy clicked his tongue against his teeth in that exasperated-sounding tic of his and looked away- but he also relaxed, and let Dick take his hand back to bandage up the worst of it. There would be no punishment from Dick over this, even if Damian himself believed he deserved it.

It would have to do for now. Dick finished with the one hand and moved on to the other, shaking his head ruefully at the damage. “I was gonna ask if you wanted to do something today, but you can’t go out like this. The press would eat me alive.” He could still remember the first time he went out in public with visible bruising, neither he nor Bruce thinking anything of it because they both knew where it had come from. It had taken weeks for the direct accusations of abuse to stop, and the whispered ones never did.

“I don’t want to go out.” Damian curled his hands, testing the give on the bandages, and Dick nodded in understanding. Going out would mean putting on a public face, a difficult task for him under the best of circumstances.

“All right,” Dick agreed easily. “Movie marathon? Got _Tremors 4_ lined up, it’s the worst one yet.”

Damian groaned at that, but his expression brightened just a little. Time alone with Dick outside of patrol was precious and to be coveted, for all that he was the person with the greatest supply of it. “Your taste in movies is atrocious, Grayson,” he said, which was as close to agreeing to such a pointless waste of a day as he would allow himself.

“Yeah, but this way I know it’s not something you’ve seen before,” Dick said as he put the first aid kit back together. There was also a good chance Damian would fall asleep midway through- assassin training or not, he was an eleven-year-old who had gotten at most three hours of sleep the night before. If they were really lucky, Dick would too, and would not dream.

He followed Damian out of the Bunker and upstairs to watch increasingly bad movies, and managed to spare not one single thought to anything else all day.

* * *

Monday dawned grey and uncomfortably moist with late-summer humidity that never quite condensed into proper rain. Damian, still out of school for the summer, sulked at and chafed against the restrictions placed upon him by his own bad choices- his hands were blooming beautifully, purple at the knuckles and green along his fingers, and he could do next to nothing with them. Dick, coming off another night of bad sleep even if he had managed not to scratch himself up again, sounded retreat after a few hours and left the penthouse with a vague excuse about visiting an old friend.

He showed up on her doorstep with two drinks and a bag of overpriced food from her favorite chic cafe, and the door unlocked for him before he could even start to fumble for the buzzer. She was watching. She was always watching. Dick wondered sometimes why her gaze didn’t weigh on him the way Bruce’s had.

“Special delivery,” he called as he came into the clock tower. “Please remember to tip your driver.”

“I didn’t order anything,” Barbara said, playing her part with a raised eyebrow and a smile at the corners of her lips.

“Oh,” Dick said, peering down into the bag in his hand. “Salad with balsamic, avocado, and grilled salmon- that isn’t you? So sorry, miss, there’s been a misunderstanding-” and she was already smiling and holding out one hand demandingly.

“Give,” she ordered, and Dick dropped the takeaway bowl into the waiting hand, wrapped plastic silverware set balanced on the domed lid.

He brought a chair around to sit with her at the table set off away from all computers and equipment while she mixed the salad up with her fork, touched his hand to the leather jacket he was wearing and considered taking it off before deciding against it. The clock tower was cool enough for it, and dark enough that he could take off the sunglasses- even in the grungy dimness of a typical Gotham day, the cloud-muted sunlight had burned too bright for him today. He dropped the shades onto the table, then pressed his thumb against the bridge of his nose to try and dispel the headache he could feel building there.

Barbara hesitated, watching him, but returned to her food when he opened one eye to look at her. “So how is Damian?” she asked.

She knew what had happened, of course. There was no hiding something like that from her. She had watched the whole thing, and had been the one dialing for the ambulance while Jason was pulling Dick off the Morris brothers.

“Pissed,” Dick said, and reached into the bag to retrieve his order of gourmet mac and cheese and bacon. He’d eaten the burgers he’d ordered on the drive over. “He thinks it’s his fault, like if he’d have fought back and gotten himself out of there I wouldn’t have lost-” Stop mid-sentence. Find another silverware set in the bag, pry the lid off the mac and cheese. Start again. “Same shit, different Robin.”

“Different Batman,” Barbara said, and popped an olive into her mouth. “Speaking of, how are _you_?”

His head hurt with sun brightness and the tension of dealing with a restless Damian, the scratches he’d given himself still throbbed with hot pain when he moved wrong or breathed too deeply, and he hadn’t managed more than four consecutive hours of sleep in a week. He stabbed his fork into his mac and cheese and thought about how to tell her all of that, how to phrase it so it didn’t sound like he needed to be taken out of the field. He opened his mouth, a dismissal on the tip of his tongue.

What he said was: “I think I fucked up with Jason.”

He snapped his mouth shut immediately, of course, pulling back in on himself in every way, even sitting up properly instead of slouching across his seat. That was not what he had meant, not something he intended to give her- not something she deserved to have put on her.

“You think?” Barbara echoed. “How much do you remember from that night?”

“All of it,” Dick said. “It’s not fuzzy or anything, it’s just kind of… distant. Like I’m remembering a movie I watched, not something I actually experienced.”

“So you know why he might be upset with you,” Barbara said slowly, unflinching and cruel.

Dick closed his eyes and nodded, tucking his chin down into the collar of his jacket. It smelled like aftershave and old cigarettes and cared-for leather, and it was buttery soft in the way leather got when it worked hard and was used right, instead of stiffening up by sitting in the closet for long stretches.

_kill me_ , his own voice said in that movie-memory, strangled and whispering by the presence of something ancient and alien that had been taking up so much of him, blood on his tongue, claws reaching to brush against Jason’s neck and spill more of it, and Jason’s face went horribly blank and he punched Dick in the diaphragm hard enough to steal his breath away even through the body armor. Oh, yes, Dick could guess why Jason might not have cared for that.

“He’s dodging Alfred,” he said, and Barbara’s eyes widened. That was the final resort, avoiding even Alfred. Only Bruce had ever dared to go that far, and then only rarely.

“Apologize,” she said instantly. “Suck up to him. Tell him you were scared the Bat was going to kill him. Find some way to show him that he’s more than just a weapon to you.”

“I _was_ scared I was going to kill him, I was even-” Dick gestured towards his own neck. The carotid pulse heavily under the skin, blood surging in a raging river, so very vulnerable. Jason wore heavier armor than anyone in the family save Batman, but he hadn’t had the helmet on that night. He’d been in too much of a rush to intercept Dick to grab all his gear.

He shivered full-body, shaking off the thought, the mental image of Jason’s eyes going wide and glassy as his blood arced between them. He tossed the container of mac and cheese aside and grabbed his drink, slurping loudly with the straw.

“Anyway,” he said once he could speak again, forcing his tone to lighten up. “I didn’t actually come here to dump all that on you. Just wanted to get out of the penthouse.”

She took too long to respond, when normally she would have a response ready to go immediately for something like that- _get a real therapist, talk to Dinah, you’re not Bruce don’t make his mistakes_. He glanced over to find her watching his hand with a curious look.

The jacket was slightly too big on him, too broad in the shoulders, the sleeves ending at the base of his fingers, and it had taken him no time at all to develop the habit of petting the leather in the palm of his hand. He stopped, uncurled his fingers and raised his arm so the sleeve fell back a bit.

“I feel like I’ve seen that jacket before,” she said. “On a security feed, maybe.”

Dick sighed. “Are we really going to do this?”

“I didn’t realize you were at the _wearing each other’s clothes_ stage.” Barbara picked up her own drink. Raspberry lemonade with Sprite and actual raspberry chunks, and that single cup had cost nearly nine dollars alone. The cafe hadn’t been there long, and even with the gentrification sweeping molasses-slow through the neighborhood it was in, it most likely wasn’t there to stay.

“It doesn’t fit him anymore so he left it at the manor,” Dick said stiffly, and he was even mostly telling the truth. It didn’t properly fit anymore, not since Jason had bulked out since returning to Gotham, but he still wore it sometimes. He had left it folded over the back of a chair in the Cave and Dick had grabbed it- mostly out of habit, as he was the only regular visitor to the Cave who left jackets lying around like that- on his way out after a meeting. He’d meant to return it, but Jason had never mentioned it, and, well.

“He took over the Cave after you moved to the penthouse,” Barbara pointed out.

There was no saving this one. Dick sucked on the straw and looked away. Barbara smiled at him.

“I think it’s cute,” she said. “Not that silent pining is a good substitute for actually talking to him-”

“Oh, look at the time,” Dick said, pointedly looking at a wrist that did not have a watch on it and pushing his chair away from the table to stand. “Got to run, I have a thing to get to.”

“Coward,” Barbara said, but it was said with love. “Thanks for lunch.”

“Next time it’ll be greasy fries from Burger King,” Dick said, leaning down to plant a chaste kiss on her cheek. She leaned into him for a moment, no doubt remembering simpler days- but she straightened up again and pulled away before he could even think about lingering. Those days were over for a reason, after all. It barely even hurt anymore. He left the clock tower with a lighter heart than he had come, and promised himself he would do something nice for her that was just for her.

He hit the sidewalk and looked east briefly, towards the manor, even wavered a step or two- but then turned towards the WE building and went home.

* * *

That night, Batman went out.

Something dark and hungry stirred in the night, straining against its chains and growling in Dick’s ear as he donned the armor. He always let up on the reins at night, and it knew it, expected it. That night was no exception; he gave it even greater freedom than usual, hoping that in return it would give him peace.

Robin stayed home and Batman flew free, faster and further than his multicolored shadow could keep up. Gaps that were a length and a half too far to leap when he wore the black and blue were barely half the distance he could manage now. The grapple and line that had been his freedom and safety net both now slowed him down and seldom saw use. He was strong enough to put a man through a wall, fast enough to dodge bullets, quiet enough to be unnoticed from inches away. He gave the beast inside a taste of freedom, hoping to slake its thirst and blunt its claws. He flew without wings, and fiercely enjoyed the freedom that had come with such a heavy price.

It was not a good night to be a criminal.

He eventually stopped, blood singing in his veins, at the imaginary border near Park Row. This was not his territory, not anymore- he had ceded it a year ago to one who knew it better. He perched on a roof’s edge nearby and looked across the city and breathed in the ugly smell of it. There was red in the street below, red like blood oversaturated while all other colors were muted. Batman tipped his head to watch, moving more like a bird than a bat, and saw when his silhouette was finally spotted. 

A red helmet tilted to consider him, expressionless. Batman thought about dropping down to talk- it would be both easier and harder, with the masks in the way- but a scream dopplered across the rooftops before he could decide, snatching his attention and turning his head, a predator sensing weakness.

When he looked back, the red helmet was turned to consider the direction he had looked- behind him in Crime Alley, where Batman was not welcome anymore. He turned back, met Batman’s gaze for a moment. A gun rose, barrel touching the forehead in a mockery of a salute. Then he was gone, not as fast or as quiet as Batman but terrifyingly efficient nonetheless.

Batman stayed on his roof edge, watching and listening, feeling suddenly somehow caged, bound.

He did not sleep well that night either.

* * *

_Talk to him_ , Barbara had said, and as she was one of the smartest people Dick had ever met, it was worth following her advice even when he really, _really_ didn’t want to.

He showed up at the Cave two nights after the near-encounter in Park Row, strolling in like he owned the place- he technically did; Bruce had left the company divvied up between his legally not-dead children but the Manor and “surroundings” had gone to Dick alone. The shuffle of leathery wings and murmuring of sleepy bats, the dripping of water far below, the eerie glow and hum of computers- it was home to him, far more than the careful sterility of the Bunker.

He came through the clock entrance, and was halfway down the stairs when there was a sharp wolf whistle from below. Stephanie was at the computer console, wearing sweaty workout clothes with her hair tied into a sloppy braid, looking absolutely tiny where she was sitting in the big chair with her feet tucked up under her. There were bruises on her elbows, her wrists, combat injuries. She had been training hard with someone recently.

“What’s with the tux, pretty boy?” she asked, softening her words with a teasing grin.

“Awards banquet at Wayne Enterprises tonight,” Dick said, tugging at his jacket and daring to touch his fingers to his hair. Alfred had, armed with a thick comb and globs of gel and a grim determination, managed to tame it into an appropriate style, and if Dick messed it up now the old man might well break his fingers. “Look good?”

“You know you do,” Stephanie said, loosening up from her tucked-up ball and stretching out to rest her feet on the edge of the workbench. “So just a bunch of upper management and board members patting each other on the back over overpriced food?”

She wanted to say more, he could tell. If she knew him better, knew he would laugh and agree, she might have dared. “Pretty much,” he said. “I’d bow out, but someone’s gotta keep an eye on Elliot.”

Her expression sharpened briefly, but they weren’t close enough for questions about his wellbeing to be taken as anything other than Batgirl asking Batman if he was sound enough to be in the field. Instead, she asked, “So are you here for Big Red or Little Red?”

So Tim had been coming by the Cave. Not surprising- even after Tim’s suicidal showdown with Ra's al Ghul, and Dick’s subsequent snatching him out of thin air, their relationship was still on shaky ground. Dick had done permanent damage to Tim’s previously unshakeable faith in him in those days after Bruce’s death, and Tim was still trying to figure out where a not-perfect Dick Grayson fit into his life. He was in and out of the Bunker, out more than in thanks to Damian’s hostility, and Dick had figured he was spending time in the Cave as well.

“Are they both here?” he asked. Were Jason and Tim getting along these days?

Stephanie snorted, putting paid to that thought. “Never at the same time,” she said. “Big Red’s still in the gym if you’re here for him. If you weren’t all dressed up, I’d say kick his ass for me.”

“Don’t have time for that, sadly,” Dick said, looking again at her bruised arms, and some tight knot in him loosened a little. He’d never had the time to do right by Stephanie, and that was entirely on him, but at least someone in this family was looking out for her.

“Good luck,” she said, as if she knew how much he would need it, and he nodded to her and turned away. Time to beard the lion in its den, then. He had put it off too long already.

* * *

The gym was set off from the rest of the cave, sealed off by its own walls, warmed and warmly lit inside. Bruce had overhauled it when Dick had first become Robin, had torn out his own workout area featuring thin mats and a single practice dummy and had installed the whole kit and kaboodle- aerial bars, exercise machines, showers, an actual trapeze. It was the best part of the Cave, in Dick’s opinion- it was the single best gift anyone had ever given him.

He headed for the door, already hearing the muted thumps of a practice dummy getting the snot beat out of it, then paused, feeling something cold and suddenly wide awake inside him.

The door to the Shrine was closed and triple-locked, the keypad glowing red to deny access. Dick stared at it, even though he knew there was only an empty shell beyond that door- it was inside him now, the thing in the Shrine. It watched him with its unknowable alien emotions, waiting to see if he was returning to the Shrine to force it back out of himself. It would fight him if he tried. It would win.

The door to the gym opened and Dick didn’t startle, but only because he had years of training at controlling such things. He looked away, and Jason stood in the doorway, watching him.

They said nothing at first- Jason went back into the gym, grabbing his street clothes off one of the benches lining the wall, and Dick followed without a word. He watched as Jason wiped off the sweat with a towel and traded his workout tank top for a long-sleeved grey shirt that settled on him to cling to still-damp skin. In the bright light of the gym, it was easy to forget what else dwelt in this Cave.

“Buyer’s remorse?” Jason asked finally, focused wholly on folding his jeans and jacket into a neat pile in his arms.

“Every day,” Dick replied, too honest, and Jason looked over at him with surprise- at the honesty, at the answer, at both, Dick didn’t know. He scrambled for something to cover up that moment of rawness and landed on, “Alfred wanted me to drop by, tell you your phone doesn’t seem to be working.”

Jason had actually pulled his phone out of his jacket pocket to check on it before he realized the comment was pure British sarcasm- a rare beast indeed, this last year. He had no choice but to go with it. “Been having problems with it. I’ll get a new one.”

And that was it for Dick’s excuse for being there. He loitered awkwardly as Jason fussed over his clothes, knowing he ought to say something but not knowing what, or how to say it. He should apologize, right? Barbara thought he should. Unfortunately, she hadn’t provided him with a script, and there was the potential of making things so much worse if he handled it badly.

Well, he had the banquet as an excuse if he needed to bail out of the conversation. He took a deep breath and settled his shoulders into a firm line, unconsciously bracing himself for battle. “Look, about the other night-”

“You going to that WE thing tonight?” Jason interrupted, finally looking at Dick again. “Think that’s a good idea right now?”

Dick wanted to bristle like an angry cat at the implication. He forced himself to stay calm- he had alienated enough family members in the last year. “Not really, but I don’t see anyone else volunteering.”

Jason tossed his clothes back onto the bench and turned to face Dick properly, arms folded across his chest. He met Dick’s gaze squarely, and Dick wondered how visible his recent sleeplessness was on his face. “Thought the Replacement was more into the business thing than you.”

“I haven’t talked to him in a couple weeks,” Dick said. Jason was too smart not to know what that meant- he hadn’t talked to Tim since the incident with the Morris brothers. “I can put on a good show for one night, Jason. I’ve been doing it my whole life.”

He hadn’t meant to say that either, and Jason shifted, obviously unhappy. His arms unfolded and came to rest loosely at his sides, his weight resting on the balls of his feet. He was prepared to move, to lunge, to fight. Dick held ground without so much as blinking and watched him think it out. In a fair fight, it would be brutal- Dick’s agility and speed and experience versus Jason’s strength and more varied training, both of them familiar enough with the other’s style to anticipate and be anticipated. But it wouldn’t be a fair fight, and Dick had already almost put Jason through a wall once with barely-leashed strength in the first days after Bruce’s death and Dick’s bargain. Jason was far too smart to forget something like that, so Dick let him come to the only possible conclusion. He had to let Dick go, no matter his misgivings.

“Since you’re bound and determined to be an idiot, do me a favor and text me if you start getting overwhelmed,” he ordered finally.

“Your phone works now?” Dick asked, unable to help himself, biting his tongue even as the words rolled off it. Jason gave him a withering look.

“I’ll get you out of there, run intervention, whatever you need,” he said, uncharacteristically sincere. Not begging, but asking, which he did so rarely.

Dick couldn’t throw it back in his face, not after everything. He nodded, touching his hand to the pocket with his phone, and Jason returned the nod- not satisfied, but accepting that that was the best he was going to get.

“I’ll be fine,” he said, because if he said it enough times, it might even be true. Jason snorted and turned away from him.

“Go, or you’ll be late.”

Dick hesitated, thinking briefly of why he actually came here. “Jason-” he began.

“Come back tomorrow,” Jason said, and Dick finally realized- he needed to prepare himself for this conversation as well. The consequences of Dick’s loss of control were seared into recent memory for both of them, but Jason had his triggers as well, and he was lethal in his own right.

Another hesitation, this one different. Dick pulled his phone out of his pocket and scrolled through his contacts.

“Still this number, right?” he asked, turning the phone to show Jason, who turned back to look at it. It was only a number, no name or picture. He nodded once, and moved away again without a word, and Dick let him go. They would have time enough tomorrow, when they were both ready to talk.

“Good luck,” Jason called after him, darkly humorous, just before the door out of the gym closed between them. Dick breathed out harshly but let it go.

He had a dinner to get to.

* * *

He didn’t make it even halfway through.

Because it was a Wayne Enterprises event, Bruce Wayne was expected to put in an appearance- Bruce, or his psychotic childhood friend who wore Bruce’s face and life like a mask. Thomas Elliot behaved himself as well as could be expected, drinking too much wine and flirting too freely and making jokes that were just a little too crude; as it had been the half-dozen other times Dick had risked letting him loose, the worst he did was splash around too much money. Still, Dick drifted in circles around Elliot as unobtrusively as he could, and mentally tallied the days until Bruce finally “retired” and left the public eye for good.

The appetizers made the rounds during the socializing that came before everyone took their seats for dinner and the speeches, and Dick had not eaten enough beforehand, too distracted by the looming conversation with Jason. It was a mistake, one made abundantly apparent when a tray of steak tartare swept past and Dick immediately abandoned babysitting duty to follow it mindlessly, suddenly seized by a hunger that was only partly borne of an empty stomach. Something dark and whispering with a buzzsaw voice in his mind scented the raw meat and Dick did not even have the chance to deny it, barely managed to stop himself from upending the entire tray into his mouth.

It left him unsettled, disquieted, tasting blood in the raw meat and still so, so hungry. The coldness from outside the Shrine door still shivered under his skin, the awareness bright and sharp when it should be muted and disinterested. He tried to block out the people in the ballroom, trying not to feel the bodies around him. They were hot in the cool room, broad strokes of false color even through his closed eyelids, and he was _hungry_.

Elliot had a woman on each arm when Dick made it back to loop close to him again. He was laughing at something one of them had said, and the sound annoyed Dick. It was Bruce’s public laugh, overly loud and well-practiced, and Dick itched to claw the man’s stolen face off his skull.

Another server passed by, and Dick snatched a glass of wine and chugged it in one swallow. The glass was fine-cut crystal, cool and smooth in his hand, and he watched the light play off the curve of its bell. Calm breath, seven count in, eight out. Watch the crystal glass roll as he turned it, the light shivering and fracturing into half-realized rainbows as it caught on the delicate carving of the stem. Focus. Tune out everything else around him. Get the steel chain of pure will around that _thing’s_ throat and hold it back.

His phone was in his hand and he blinked at it, hardly recognizing it. He did recognize the number on the screen. His thumb slid over the keypad, tapped a message in a quick nervous tempo, hovered over the Send button.

Someone knocked into his arm, hard, and the wineglass fell and shattered. Someone else shrieked, a woman, and Dick snapped his gaze up just in time to see a spray of blood splash across her, droplets spattering against his own tux. He could taste blood, could smell it, watched it seep into his crisp white shirt.

The woman who had screamed had turned to him, talking to him- white noise, now, nonsensical buzzing like a mosquito’s hum. She reached out to wipe at his shirt with a napkin and Dick could count individual hairs from the fine dusting on her arm. He didn’t dare look up, didn’t know what his eyes looked like- nothing human, for sure.

He wanted to rip her arm off, imagined how easy it would be, how delightful the pop as her shoulder tore free of its socket, and squeezed his eyes shut.

Eventually- when the urge faded enough- he opened them again. The crowd had moved away, Elliot holding court a ways from him by telling a loud story. Their gazes met, and Elliot paled but did not flinch. His intervention was not a kindness. If he knew what Dick was, if he feared Dick losing control-

There were servers with food at the edges of the room, people whispering in the shadows. He was better off staying away, in the middle. He closed his eyes again and focused on his breathing.

A familiar scent enveloped him, gun oil and aftershave and that faint hint of cigarettes. He opened his eyes again and was not surprised to see that he was moving, felt the pressure of a strong hand on his shoulder, his elbow. A precise hold, prepared to slip into a headlock if needed. A familiar voice in his ears, still buzzing senselessly, a familiar warmth close to him.

He stole a glance, saw the profile, the shock of white hair. He closed his eyes again, trusting that he would be safely led away.

He breathed.

* * *

Jason left Dick in the car for only as long as it took him to grab the pizza he’d ordered on their way out of the banquet, three minutes tops. It was a long three minutes.

“I wasn’t going to hurt anyone,” he said after his fourth slice. It was the first thing he had said since the banquet. Jason had carefully and painstakingly talked him through his episode during the drive over, but he hadn’t pushed for more than a nod as a sign of awareness.

“I know,” Jason said around the last bites of his first slice, because he was a civilized human being who did not inhale his food like some sort of demon of darkness was starving to death under his skin. He sounded like he actually did believe it, and it was a relief to hear. The lack of an _I told you so_ was an even greater relief, although Dick knew it was coming, just not when he was holding onto his sanity by his fingertips.

A piece of sausage fell off the side of the pizza slice in Dick’s hand, splattering sauce onto his white shirt. He scooped it up and scraped at the stain with his greasy fingers like it would make anything better. The shirt was already stained anyway- it had been red wine splashed on him, not a glassful of blood, obvious enough in retrospect. Wine only looked like blood to those whose experience with blood began and ended with shaving cuts and skinned knees.

“What excuse did you give?” he asked. He could easily recall Jason’s voice in his ears, words not meant for him.

“That you were sick and were trying to tough it out,” Jason said. “Lucius Fox came with too, so no one would think I was trying to kidnap you.”

Dick hadn’t known Lucius was there, although honestly it was no surprise he hadn’t noticed anything outside of Jason’s anchoring presence. He would have to do something nice for the man- Lucius hated those types of events. He looked over at Jason, who wore the same grey shirt from the gym under his leather jacket, and wondered at what the people at the banquet had thought of him. One thing was for sure, he hadn’t needed to waste Lucius’ time. No one in that crowd would blink an eye at a strange handsome man sweeping Dick Grayson away. It would have fallen to Bruce to notice and decide whether or not to intervene- but Elliot was probably just glad to be rid of him.

Which begged the question. “Who’s watching Elliot?”

“Stephanie,” Jason said. “Had Alfred call Lucius to get her a last-minute invite.” He paused, and- lest Dick foolishly imagine Stephanie Brown in a dress appropriate for such an event- added, “She had to get her own shirt, but one of Tim’s suits actually fit her pretty well.”

“Ah,” Dick said, and looked out the window. So, minutes after thinking that he needed to do better by her, he had dismissed her, overlooked her. Made a crack about seeing no one volunteering, and had never even asked. Well done, Dick.

Jason pushed the lid of the pizza box down, and Dick realized that he had been reaching for an empty box. He had eaten most of the pizza without even noticing. At least the spice of the sauce and the heavy feel of grease coating his tongue drowned out any memory of blood-taste.

“You were right, I shouldn’t have gone,” he said.

Jason made a sharp noise, not quite a snort. He was rarely wrong.

“What set you off?” he asked, taking a bite of the slice he had managed to keep for himself.

Dick thought about that one. The scream, the wine- but his control had been slipping before then. The steak, showing up hungry- but he had gone without eating in the past, and had suffered for it, but never to that extent.

The truth, then.

“Bruce died a year ago tomorrow,” he said to his reflection in the window. He watched as Jason went very still, sharp eyes turning to meet his reflected gaze.

“And?” he prompted finally. No judgment in his tone, just patience.

“It doesn’t feel real,” Dick said, turning his head to look at the man himself, instead of his mirror image. “It still feels like I’m gonna wake up at any moment, and Bruce will be at the kitchen table, reading the _Daily Planet_ so he can email Clark with his stupid list of typos and corrections.” He flexed his hand, and his nails pushed outward, sharpening into the claws that had ripped the Morris brothers into shreds. He had not only wanted them dead, he had wanted them to _suffer_ , and so they had. “And it's stupid, because he’s dead, but I-" 

Jason’s hand came down over his, trapping it gently against the console. Dick looked at it, gaining courage from the touch.

"I'm still disappointing him," he finished.

Jason outright scoffed at that, squeezing the fingers of the captured hand in remonstration. "Bullshit," he said simply. "You never disappointed him. You were the golden standard in that house."

Dick hesitated, closed his eyes- but he had come this far. "Do you remember when we were in the Shrine, and I told you it didn’t matter what Bruce wanted? When you said he meant it to be you?"

"Yeah," Jason said, wary.

"I didn't tell you then, but I knew he never meant it to be any of us." He paused again, braced himself.

"When he adopted you, he started looking for a way to get rid of it, to purge it," he said, and the tight grip on his fingers grew painful. "That's how I first heard about it, there's not a huge community of magic-users out there, I knew everyone he did. He stopped looking after- after. But he never meant it to be you, Jason, he never wanted anyone else to have to deal with this. If he knew what I did, he'd be so furious-"

"Stop," Jason ordered, his voice tight and strained. "Shut the fuck up."

Dick kept silent for a moment, then added with a sharp, unamused laugh, “All that, and then the week before the anniversary, just when I start thinking maybe I had it under control, maybe Bruce just underestimated me- and I almost kill two people.”

“They kidnapped Damian,” Jason snapped. He sounded like he didn’t know what conversational tack he should be taking, and simply went with the one that proved Dick most wrong.

“It was a ransom grab, he could have handled them himself,” Dick countered. He pulled his hand free, dragged both down his face. “It’s fine.”

“You keep saying that.”

“It will be fine,” Dick insisted. “In a couple of days everything will be back to normal. I’ve dealt with worse.” Insomnia came with the job, and nightmares too, and now that he knew he couldn’t be trusted in situations like banquets, he would avoid them. There was no lie in what he had told Jason- he had been worse off before, and came through it intact.

Jason stared at him, something at work behind his green eyes, his mind sharp and unknowable. After a minute he turned away and started the car.

“You still hungry?” he asked.

“Always,” Dick admitted. “You can just take me home.”

The car pulled out of the parking lot, but did not turn right, which would take them back to the penthouse. Dick watched out the window as the city rolled by- Bruce’s city, Thomas and Martha Wayne’s city, a goddamn train wreck of a city that Jason and Dick alike had inherited.

“I’m sorry,” he said. It was easier in the dark, with Jason out of sight.

Jason glanced at him. “Sorry for what? Making me have to rescue your ass?”

“Part of it,” Dick said. “And for asking you to kill me.”

That was greeted with a dismissive noise and a wave of a hand, nowhere near the freeze-out he had anticipated. “You thought you were gonna kill me. I got that. It’s cool.”

“Yeah, but still.” Dick shifted in his seat, turning to look at Jason, meeting his gaze when he stopped for a red light and looked over. “I don’t think of you as a weapon, Jason, and it was shitty of me to treat you like one.”

Again there was that sense of a keen mind working behind an inscrutable expression. The light turned green, and Jason only stepped off the brake and on the gas when the car behind them honked. He drove in silence, watching the road, and Dick did as well. Neon signs and street lights blurred past, smeared through the first spattering of rain on the windshield.

Two more turns, and they were pulling into the parking lot of a 24-hour buffet. Dick worked at the pearl buttons on his jacket, leaving it and his bowtie in the back seat, and ducked his head against the rain as he climbed out of the car.

Jason came around beside him, and something warm and heavy draped over his shoulders. The fit was looser, better matched to Jason’s current size, but it smelled the same- leather and aftershave.

“Here,” he said. “You can keep that one too if you want. It’s a spare.”

Well. Dick was a fool for thinking Jason would miss something like that. To salvage pride, he said nothing, just pulled his arms through the sleeves and tugged at the collar to settle the too-big jacket better on his shoulders.

Jason reached the door to the restaurant a step before him, owing to longer legs. He grabbed the handle but didn’t open it, instead staring at the jacket he had given Dick, and idly reaching up to wipe a thumb over a scuff in the leather. Dick froze in place like a fox in a snare, eyes wide, waiting.

“I’m not scared of you, Dick,” Jason said. “I never was. So stop thinking you’re going to chase me off as soon as I figure out how dangerous you actually are.”

Then he pushed the door open, holding it like a proper gentleman, and Dick stared at him until a gust of wind blew rain against the back of his neck and chased him inside, incredibly aware of Jason close behind him.

* * *

He had been in bed half an hour, staring into the darkness and listening to the city breathe with noise muffled by height and by walls, when small hands dragged the blanket down. He didn’t startle- he had heard his door creak open, felt the warmth of another body enter the room- but propped himself up on one elbow to help rearrange the covers, then laid down again, reveling in the blazing heat behind him.

Damian squirmed at first, restless and nervous. When he finally settled down it still took him several minutes to find his words.

“This is only so you don’t injure yourself again,” he said over his shoulder, daring Dick to call him out on it.

“Oh, of course,” Dick agreed.

“Clearly someone needs to watch over you,” Damian added.

“Clearly.”

The boy quieted after that, and Dick listened to his heart rate and breathing slow to nearly sleeping. It was soothing in a way, a reminder of what he had almost lost, what he had fought so fiercely to protect. And then Damian pushed back until they were back to back, and Dick could feel that steady heartbeat as well as hear it.

Dick closed his eyes and smiled into the darkness.

* * *

The night of the anniversary, Dick flew.

He stayed in bed long after Damian got up in the morning, and hid away in the garage in the Bunker for most of the rest of the day. Alfred let him hide, left him to figure out how to remember and grieve on his own. Damian spent a few hours nipping at his heels, a faithful shadow, but Dick’s uncharacteristic coolness eventually chased him off. He would have to apologize tomorrow. Then dusk came, then night proper, and Dick put on a dark shirt he didn’t mind ruining and took to the roof. He looked out at the city- Bruce’s city- for a long while, felt the rain and listened to the sirens sing in the distance.

Then he unfolded his wings.

It hurt- it always did. It felt like breaking bone and flaying skin, sliding sickening and heavy like an oil slick across his body. It was white agony, his vision washed out even with his eyes closed. But it was over in two breaths, maybe three, and he shook out his wings in the cool night air. He balanced his weight on the balls of his feet, letting the swell of anticipation crest, break-

He leapt, and his wings snapped open and caught him as he fell.

He could not fly fast, nor at any real altitude, but it was flight, and it alone was worth the bargain he had made in that dark Shrine. He glided over the city at first, then tucked in to head northwest, away from the city and its creeping sprawl of suburbs. It wasn’t too long before he was flying over darkness that was as absolute as the sky above him, interrupted only by the daisy chain of street lights on major roads and the occasional bright glow of a gas station.

Away from the city, into the farmlands. He could see the mountains looming ahead, low-lying and hilly- to someone who had climbed in the Himalayas, the Appalachians were little more than opportunistic foothills. They blazed beautifully with all the colors of fire come autumn, but that was a couple months away yet, and the effect best seen in the daylight hours besides. 

He had been flying for hours, perhaps- hard to judge up there- when something below caught his eye. He tucked his wings down and landed in a roll, then brushed dirt off himself and stood up to look around him. The flowers came up to his shoulders, heavy heads nodding with seeds. Dick pet his fingers gently over one’s petals, then traced his grip down its hairy stalk. The farmer would not notice one flower missing from an entire field, but he left it alone.

Clark had laughed, once, when the stars aligned and they had a free moment to grab coffee at a corner cafe and just be normal people for five minutes. He’d been listening passively to the talk at a florist cart across the street- such things were possible in Metropolis- and had watched the vendor press a bouquet of sunflowers onto a hapless customer for an exorbitant price.

“As good as weeds, in Kansas,” he’d said, glowing with amusement in the sunlight. Dick, still carrying the physical bruises of his last fight with a supervillain and the emotional bruises of his last fight with Bruce, had felt dull as a tarnished penny in contrast. “Ma likes them. She planted a whole row of the wild ones to separate her garden from the rest of the back yard one time, and every year they try to take over her entire vegetable patch. Pa gets as many seeds as he can off them, but there’s always hundreds of birds in their yard come late summer.” He had smiled again, soft and fond with memories. “Most farmers in Kansas would probably pay for people to come take the sunflowers, instead of charging them for the privilege.”

The sunflowers around Dick now were not weeds, but cultivated crops. The sea of blooms resolved into wavering but orderly rows of stalks when looked at from ground level, and the hand-sized faces were overflowing with seeds. He had seen sunflowers in Kansas, a single massive flower the size of both his hands outstretched, standing a good five feet taller than him and proudly turned to face the sun. He had never visited the Kent farm at the right time of year to see Ma Kent’s crop, but he had a great deal of fun imagining the sight of it.

The flowers were all facing east, patiently awaiting dawn. They would follow the sun as it rose and fell, then turn from west to east again at night in preparation of doing it again the next day. Dick looked east as well, where he could see the smudge of light pollution on the horizon. He had not come far enough to escape Gotham entirely. He would never be able to completely leave it ever again.

The sea of flowers that had made him smile minutes ago now felt eerie. He touched the flower again, then turned and headed for the edge of the field. Taking off without the benefit of a high ledge to jump off of took a lot of work, and he didn’t want to harm the sunflowers in the process.

When he gained the sky again, he turned east, following the line of the sunflowers’ sight, and headed home.

* * *

His phone said he was forty minutes home from his trip to the sunflower field, when the piercing screams had him bolting upright in his bed.

His back was tight and his entire body sore with the unfamiliar exertion of flying, so he straightened up out of his defensive hunch, arching his back and letting his shoulders fall against his headboard with a tired groan. It had been the same nightmare, the loss of control, the taste of blood. He would be bored of it by now, if it weren’t so terrifyingly effective.

There was a balcony off the living area. Dick rolled out of bed and headed for it, pushing the door open and sliding it shut once he was through it and leaning back against it. Listened to the staccato beat of the rain, smelled it in the air, the wet pavement, the ozone bright as copper, as blood, on his tongue.

He closed his eyes to the nightmare and leaned on the memory of another rainy night, so very recent. Two bodies pressed tight under an overhang as the rain broke into a downpour for a minute. A hand on his waist, holding him close, then sliding around him. Hair carding between his fingers, lips hot and slick against his own, leather around him, trapping in the hot summer humidity. A promise- _you don’t scare me, you never have_ \- an absolution whispered between them.

He hadn’t meant to, not then, not like that. He had thought to wait until they were in a better place, safer with the world and with each other. It would never have happened- they were lucky to have the here and now, with the lives they lived- but a dream held at bay by unattainable standards was safer than reaching for it.

The trembling had eased enough by then. He turned around, reaching for the door handle, and stopped at the sight of his reflection. Something dark and hungry stared at him from behind his gaze, intent and considering. He could feel it watching him.

“I’m not scared of you,” he said to it, and between one blink and the next, all that was left in his eyes was his own exhaustion.

The door abruptly slid open, and Damian checked himself on the threshold with surprise, clearly not having expected to find Dick standing right on the other side of it. He peered up with wide, bruised, al Ghul green eyes. He had not been sleeping well either, and if he were anyone else, Dick would kneel down and hug him. But he was Damian Wayne, and Dick respected him enough to let him have his pride.

“I thought,” he began, then visibly bit his tongue.

“Just a nightmare,” Dick said, daring a hand on the boy’s shoulder and smiling when it wasn’t shrugged off. Still a child, for all his claims otherwise. “It’s better now. I’m going back to bed.”

Damian regarded him with suspicion for a moment, then stepped aside so Dick could come in and shut the door behind them. Dick headed down the hallway and back into his bedroom, settled back into his bed, and waited. And sure enough- a few minutes, long enough that he was settled, long enough that he might even be asleep- a warm body was at the door.

If he said something Damian would leave. He did nothing, and Damian dithered another minute before finally coming over. As he had the other night, he kept a careful distance between them, and as the other night, the distance collapsed to nothing as soon as he was half-asleep.

Dick closed his eyes, and for the first time in a while, fell asleep easily.

* * *

He woke up to bickering.

He didn’t move for a long moment, blinking at the light creeping around the edge of the curtains and listening to the sound of people in the other room, marveling quietly in the privacy of the moment. For the first time since he had heard Damian had been taken, that presence in his mind, the keen awareness that had watched his every move for over a week, was finally fully muted, distant and uninterested. Not gone- it would not be gone until his dying day. But not testing its bonds anymore either. It would not stir again, he knew, not until he put on the cowl.

He had weathered the storm, as he had so many others, and even only hours after its passing, felt foolish for fearing it.

He came out of his room wearing his flannel pajama pants and the Green Lantern shirt he had bought to annoy Bruce years ago, and came into the kitchen where Jason was holding court and Damian was laying siege.

“You’re doing it wrong,” the boy insisted, standing on tiptoe to see into the bowl Jason was stirring. Jason lifted the bowl off the counter just a little, just enough, and Damian sank back onto his heels and glared.

“What do you know?” Jason asked. “You’ve never cooked a single thing in your entire life.”

“You’re using _nutmeg_ ,” Damian said, sounding thoroughly scandalized. “And brown sugar. This is not how Pennyworth makes them. His are adequate, why are you trying to change the recipe?”

Dick wandered away from the war zone, over to where Pennyworth himself was sitting at the dining table, newspaper folded open before him. He had two cups of tea at hand, and passed one over as Dick sat down.

“So I hear your French toast is adequate,” Dick said.

“High praise indeed, considering the source,” Alfred replied, fussing with the paper to hide his pleased smile. He stopped soon enough, and made no attempt to disguise it as he closely studied Dick, who drank his tea and tolerated it. “You’re looking much better, Master Richard,” he said finally, sounding relieved.

“I’m feeling better,” Dick said, not knowing how else to describe it. “Sorry if I had you worried.”

Alfred, as ever, glossed over the emotion and focused on the heart of the matter. “I see you and Master Jason have made amends.”

Dick froze for a moment, suddenly scared- what did Alfred know? Would it bother him, two men raised as sons to the same father, even if they never saw each other as brothers? How much damage would his disapproval do to such a fragile new thing?

Before he could work himself into a proper panic a hand pressed over his, a comforting touch as rare as rainfall in the Mojave. “I’m glad,” Alfred said, and if he didn’t know, he suspected, and saw nothing amiss. Then he moved his hand, set his paper aside with a sigh. “I suppose I should distract Master Damian.”

Dick looked over to the kitchen area, where Jason was moving onto the actual cooking. The cooktop was too low for him to block Damian’s sight without leaving their food soggy and half-raw, and Damian was crowding him as much as he dared, jabbing a finger at something. Jason looked over his shoulder, casting a demanding glare at the other two, and Alfred sighed and rose to his feet.

He waited until Alfred had successfully lured Damian out of the room before he got up and meandered over, leaning back against the counter next to the cooktop. The pan Jason was standing over was billowing steam clouds with the scent of nutmeg, cloves, cinnamon. Beside it was another pan sizzling with an entire pig’s worth of bacon.

“I didn’t expect to see you here,” he admitted. It was nice having Jason close, but the penthouse was solidly Dick’s space. Jason rarely came to the Bunker and never upstairs.

“Thought about trying to give you your space, let you get your head on straight.” Jason stabbed the toast with the fork in his hand, flipping a slice over. “But that worked out so well last time.” He paused, letting the sarcasm sink in, then glanced at Dick and smirked. “Nice shirt.”

“Yeah, Bruce loved it,” Dick said, plucking at the well-worn fabric.

It had been a year- Jason did not bristle at the reminder of Bruce Wayne’s mere existence, nor did Dick cringe at the reminder of his absence. Some wounds would, if not heal, then at least go numb with time.

Dick closed his eyes in the quiet that followed, listening to the bacon, feeling Jason move. Occasionally their arms brushed, Jason making no effort to avoid him. They hadn’t talked about it, not really, but he was brave enough to test the ice. He only opened them again when there was the heavy clunk of a pan being moved off the heat, silence descending after.

Jason was standing close enough to touch, watching him. His eyebrows rose a little as their gazes met. “Better?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Dick said. “Better now.”

One hand came up and settled lightly against Dick’s neck, hesitant, asking for permission as he had not the first time. Dick nodded once, tipping his chin up, and Jason bent down those scant inches to meet him halfway.

Kissing in the kitchen, in the sunlight, was different than kissing in the rainy dark. Jason was slower, more considerate, guiding Dick at first with the barest touch of his hand on Dick’s neck, and ceding ground easily when Dick pushed into him, grabbed at his shirt to hold him close. It felt more real, more sincere, and Dick was the biggest fool in the world for denying both of them this for so long.

The stove timer buzzed and Jason pulled back half an inch to turn it off, then pulled away entirely as voices sounded in the hallway. Dick cleared his throat and slid a few inches away himself, a carefully measured distance. He didn’t want Damian finding out now, but he still wanted to be able to touch.

“We should talk about that,” Jason murmured as he piled toast and bacon onto serving plates. Not a warning, but a simple acknowledgement- their lives were batshit insane already, trying to manage a relationship on top of that would require real effort.

“Later,” Dick said, taking the plate with the toast, since he most likely couldn’t be trusted with the bacon. “Don’t need Damian trying to castrate you.”

Jason made a face at that, no doubt having failed to consider it, and Dick laughed at it as he moved over to the table. Damian claimed the seat next to him, of course, and Jason sat across from him, and if he slouched in his seat and stretched his long legs annoyingly far into Dick’s space, Dick found no reason to complain about it.

Bickering and laughing, eating breakfast with his family at a table soaked in sunlight that did not burn his eyes, the heady promise of something new about to begin in the stolen moments of eyes meeting across the table, a leg pressed against his- it was one of the best mornings of his life.

**Author's Note:**

> If I could have figured out a way to work in a scene with Stephanie Brown in a suit, surrounded by the rich and powerful and happily roasting their asses while drinking expensive wine, then falling asleep and snoring loudly during the speeches, I absolutely would have.


End file.
